Chapter VIII. In a Great Gale - Page 2

If the air glider is any good it ought to hold me. I will go up."

"Now, Ned, how about you?" asked the young inventor.

"Well, I guess it's up to me to come along. but I sure do wish it was over with," and Ned glanced out of the window to see if the gale was dying out. But the wind was as high as ever.

It was hard work getting the air glider out of the shed, and in position on top of a hill, about a quarter of a mile away, for Tom intended "taking off" from the mound, as he could not get a running start without a motor. The wind, however, he hoped, would raise him and the strange craft.

In order to get it over the ground without having it capsize, or elevate before they were ready for it, drag ropes, attached to bags of sand were used, and once these were attached the four found that they could not wheel the air glider along on its bicycle wheels.

"We'll have to get Eradicate and his mule, I guess," said Tom, after a vain endeavor to make progress against the wind. "When it's up in the air it will be all right, but until then I'll need help to move it. Ned, call Rad, will you?"

The colored man, with Boomerang, his faithful mule, was soon on hand. The animal was hitched to the glider, and pulled it toward the hill.

"Now to see what happens," remarked Tom as he wheeled his latest invention around where the wind would take it as soon as the restraining ropes were cast off, for it was now held in place by several heavy cables fastened to stakes driven in the ground.

Tom gave a last careful look to the weights, planes and rudders. He glanced at a small anemometer or wind gage, on the craft, and noted that it registered sixty miles an hour.

"That ought to do," he remarked. "Now who's going up with me? Will you take a chance, Mr. Petrofsky?"

"I'd rather not--at first."

"Come on then, Ned and Mr. Damon. Mr. Petrofsky and Rad can cast off the ropes."

The wind, if anything, was stronger than ever. It was a terrific gale, and just what was needed. But how would the air glider act? That was what Tom wanted very much to know.

"Cast off!" he cried to the Russian and Eradicate, and they slipped the ropes.

The next moment, with a rush and whizzing roar, the air glider shot aloft on the wings of the wind.